


wearing nothing but blame

by queermccoy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Alternate Universe - Priests, Atheist Character, Guilt, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:53:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23032024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queermccoy/pseuds/queermccoy
Summary: There’s something thick about the air this morning, heavy and settling in Eddie’s lungs with every breath he takes. He looks over at the other side of his bed, where Richie had been when he fell asleep last night. He touches the pillow Richie had laid his head on, closed his eyes on, with the hand he’d used to touch his own neck. He touches his lips next, then his belly, fingers skimming over the sheets around his waist.Richie did this, made him feel like his skin is too tight, like if he doesn’t touch himself he’ll burst open at the seams.or, Richie is the church caretaker and Eddie is a priest who loves him.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 33
Kudos: 208





	wearing nothing but blame

**Author's Note:**

> max said, "hmmm that one song about catholic guilt got me thinkin bout priest eddie falling in love with the big greasy caretaker who comes in to clean before his sermons" and I said, "Could you drop the name of that song? I am Curious" and then they replied with this [link](https://youtu.be/3OdS2Vf0QL0) and my brain melted and this came out. It's not like terribly explicit, but I felt weird writing it on the bus so.

In the sticky hot heat of an August morning, with the sun shining through his blackout curtains, Eddie sits up in bed. He’s laying in rumpled sheets, damp with night sweat and filthy with dried come. He clenches his fingers in the wrinkled fabric, feeling it like he did last night, bunched up between his desperate fingers.

He’s not desperate now; he’s just thinking. Thinking and remembering. 

Richie had been here and now he’s gone. 

Eddie tries not to be disappointed, tries not to be relieved. He tries not to feel anything at all as he tucks his sheets around his hips to hide his nakedness from himself. 

He reaches up and touches, hesitantly, the skin at the point where his neck meets his shoulders and hisses when the pads of his fingers brush against something. He presses down more firmly and thrills at the sick feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach. 

Richie did that. 

There’s something thick about the air this morning, heavy and settling in Eddie’s lungs with every breath he takes. He looks over at the other side of his bed, where Richie had been when he fell asleep last night. He touches the pillow Richie had laid his head on, closed his eyes on, with the hand he’d used to touch his own neck. He touches his lips next, then his belly, fingers skimming over the sheets around his waist. 

Richie did this, made him feel like his skin is too tight, like if he doesn’t touch himself he’ll burst open at the seams. 

Eddie brings his other hand up to his mouth, slipping his index finger past his lips, feeling it with his tongue. The hand on his belly rubs comforting circles into his skin but doesn’t slip below the sheets. He feels… devoured. He feels like he’s pulling himself apart and he remembers Richie last night, the way he gripped Eddie hard when he touched him the way Eddie is touching himself now. 

At the front of the house, Eddie hears a noise. He turns his head, fingers slipping from his lips. He widens his eyes and sits bolt upright when he hears the cabinet doors in the kitchen open and close. It’s only supposed to be him here, it’s only ever him and Jesus who live in this house and it doesn’t cross his mind that maybe Richie is still here until he looks around wildly for pants to wear out of his bedroom and sees Richie’s muddy boots still lined up inside the door frame. 

He’s never stayed the whole night before.

Eddie relaxes, his shoulders slumping and hands flexing in his lap. The slow, languid feeling of waking up disgusting but sated is gone. He needs a shower, to clean his body even if he can’t clean himself. Under his skin he feels Richie’s fingerprints and he can’t scrub hard enough to wash those away. 

He doesn’t know if he wants to. He thinks he doesn’t, but when he thinks too long on the way Richie makes him feel, how warm his chest gets and hot his skin goes, he wants to ram an ice pick into his eye socket and wriggle it around until it stops. His arms grow heavy.

Richie appears in the doorway, holding two mugs of coffee. 

“Is it a sin to drink caffeine?” He asks, like nothing is wrong. Eddie thinks maybe for Richie, there isn’t anything wrong. He’s an atheist, he said, and he fucks guys all the time, he said. Eddie feels God’s judgemental eyes on him, not like Richie’s were last night. 

“No, it fucking isn’t and you know that,” Eddie snaps, holding a hand out for one of the mugs. Richie hands it over. He’s frowning, and Eddie taps his finger against the rim of his mug. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t joke about... that. With you.” 

Richie looks at him through his eyelashes, over the rims of his glasses, assessing. He’s always assessing, like Eddie is a puzzle or a bomb that will explode if you don’t get the wires crossed just right. 

“Okay,” Richie says, and it sounds like he means it. 

“Come back to bed,” Eddie tells him, plunking his mug on his side table and patting the mattress. He has nothing on his schedule for today until late afternoon and if he doesn’t think about it too hard in the sunlight, maybe they can mess around until he has to get up. 

“Ahh,” Richie sips his coffee slowly. His eyes are shining. “I can’t, I have to work soon and my boss is a real stickler for the rules.” 

Eddie suppresses a grin. “I know your boss,” he says, “I’ll put in a good word.” 

“Are you-“ Richie starts and stops. He sets his coffee mug on the same side table, next to Eddie’s, because there’s only one in the room. No one else is meant to spend time here. 

He continues not to say anything, just crawls into bed and slots himself next to Eddie like their coffee mugs on the table and just as warm. Every place they touch feels good, like a warm blanket in winter or the AC in a Walmart in August, which is where Eddie thinks he might spend this evening if the temperature slinks above 95 today. 

Eddie touches the skin over Richie’s cheekbone, under the rims of his glasses. He can’t feel the freckles but he pretends they’re like Braille and they hold all of Richie’s secrets or maybe a road map for where they’re supposed to go next. 

“Do you want to go to Walmart with me later?” Eddie asks, pulling his hand away. He tucks them both, both his hands, into the sheets in his lap.

“I should probably find my pants then,” Richie jokes, making a show of glancing around for the pants he knows damn well they left in the living room last night, when Eddie knelt down to make a different kind of prayer than he’d made that morning at mass. 

Richie isn’t really dressed, but at least he’s wearing a T-shirt and boxers. Eddie feels extremely exposed in comparison, his chest bare and his legs, under the linens. Before Richie, he’d never been naked with someone. He’d had sex once, before seminary, but it wasn’t good. He wasn’t naked, literally or— he wasn’t naked anyway and neither was she. He thought at the time that his disinterest in the act was proof that he was made for the church. He can’t touch with his own hands that maybe it was something else. He is made for something else. He clenches his fists in his poor sheets, more spoiled than they’ve ever been before. 

“I don’t know, I think you could just wear those to the store. Put on a show for the employees, end up on that website—” Eddie says, but Richie interrupts saying: 

“What websites are you—” Eddie interrupts him right back: 

“People of Walmart or whatever!” He’s reaching out with his hands to cover Richie’s mouth with them but misses when Richie laughs and moves away. 

“Eddie,” he giggles and it sounds so good. “That is so old! How often do you use the internet, you dinosaur!” 

“I’m younger than you are!” He yells back, finally over taking Richie, making them fall back into the bed. Eddie, draped over Richie’s chest with his hand over Richie’s mouth, feels his breath catch in his throat. 

He moves his hand, fingers trailing over Richie’s lips. He wonders what it would be like for Richie to kneel before him and take the Eucharist. 

Eddie closes his eyes against the thought and presses his lips against Richie’s cheek, a finger sliding into his mouth. He groans softly when Richie tongues at the pads of his fingers. 

It’s so hot out already this morning, and Eddie can feel sweat pooling at the small of his back. It should gross him out when Richie grips him there, hands folding into the dip like they were made for each other, Richie’s hands and Eddie’s back. It doesn’t though, and Eddie melts into Richie, letting himself go boneless against his broad chest. He pulls away from Richie’s face and tucks his head in the curve of his neck. He leaves his finger in Richie’s mouth, adds another. Richie licks at that one too.

“You’re being so good,” he whispers and kisses Richie’s neck. This is something else they don’t talk about. 

When Eddie shifts, he can feel how hard Richie is, can tell he’s feeling frantic based on how excitedly he’s sucking on Eddie’s fingers. Eddie’s energy doesn’t match. He rocks his hips, thigh brushing slowly over Richie’s cock. Under him, Richie groans around his fingers. Eddie feels the vibrations up his arm and through his whole body. There’s blood rushing in his ears. 

He tugs at Richie’s boxers, slides them down his legs. Eddie slips his fingers out of Richie’s mouth and he makes a noise, a little whimper like he misses them already. 

“Shhh,” Eddie breathes, reaching up and kissing his lips, an apology for removing his fingers. Richie surges up, but Eddie holds himself above Richie, high enough that their kisses are light, feathery. 

Eddie takes his hand, his fingers dripping, and brings it under Richie’s legs. He shifts and lifts Richie’s hips with his dry hand and touches Richie’s hole with his spit slick fingers. 

“Shit,” Richie swears, and it’s like his giggle, like everything that comes out of his mouth; amazing. Eddie kisses him, not teasing like he was before, but real. He wants to drown in it, in Richie. 

Eddie rubs around the rim of his hole, because he wants and he doesn’t want to want but it’s okay if Richie does. He swallows the sounds Richie makes, pushing their bodies into each other, as close as they can get without literally crawling inside of each other. Eddie wants to crawl inside of him. 

He settles for touching him inside, his mouth and his hole, Eddie’s tongue and Eddie’s fingers inside of Richie and touching him. He keeps touching him. He reaches into Richie with both hands and yanks until there’s enough room for him to steeple them together in his chest. 

Richie reaches for him, tries to touch him under the sheet still wrapped around his waist, but Eddie grabs his hand instead. He laces their fingers together and presses his hand into the mattress, pinning him in place. He keeps one hand under Richie and the other holding his hand. He rolls his hips, slotting their bodies together and thrusting languidly. It’s disgusting, rutting their bodies, still filthy from last night and dripping with new heat sweat, together with the sheet between them. 

Pressure builds at the base of Eddie’s spine, in the pit of his stomach, the stretch of his shoulders. He can’t kiss Richie anymore, he can’t breathe if he does. He slams his face into Richie’s neck and sucks in a deep breath, teeth scraping against the delicate skin under his ear. 

Richie shudders, his whole body shaking, and it sends something sharp through Eddie. He squeezes Richie’s hand tight, picking up the pace and sliding their bodies together faster and harder, bringing his hand out from under Richie, away from his hole, and wrapping it around his cock instead. He thrusts himself against Richie’s hip and jacks Richie, spitting into his hand first and reveling in the way Richie’s heavy lidded eyes burn at the sight of spit trailing from his lips to his fingers. 

When Richie comes, his whole body goes rigid, absolutely still, then with a moan from deep in his chest, he shakes himself apart. He stares at Eddie with eyes so heavy he wonders if Richie can see anything at all. 

Eddie closes his own eyes, screws them shut, and takes himself in his hands. His naked chest catches against the fabric of Richie’s T-shirt as he strokes himself. He comes too, laying on top of Richie, their breathing labored and in synch, panting into each other’s skin. 

Eddie’s head is empty, and he wonders if this is the Bible means by peace. If this is what he was meant to do all along. He thinks maybe his body was made for this, made for the slip and pull of their two bodies, for the way he feels, right now, so big and so small all at once. 

Richie died and was reborn again with Eddie’s fingers wrapped around his cock. He died and was resurrected with biting kisses. This is what Eddie was made for, his body knows it even if God doesn’t. 

He feels Richie’s laugh before he hears it, laying still on Richie’s chest with his cheek resting on his pecs. 

“What?” He asks, poking at his soft belly. Richie laughs some more and pokes him back. 

“Coffee’s probably cold now,” he says instead of answering. Eddie turns and props his chin on Richie’s boob, looking up at him through his lashes. Richie looks down at him and touches the sweat collecting at his temples. “You need a shower.” 

“You need a shower,” Eddie shoots back, but they’re both right. They need to shower and get on with the day.

Eddie bites Richie’s nipple through his shirt and delights in the way he squawks as he rolls off his bed and stands at the foot. He’s naked, he’s covered in come, and he thinks he feels good. Bad and good and good and bad. He shoves it all down and reaches into his dresser for a clean pair of underwear. When he looks back, Richie is wiping off his chest and thighs with Eddie’s sheet. 

“Gross,” he says, but smiles at Richie so he knows he doesn’t mean that Richie is gross, or more realistically that his being gross doesn’t really bother him. He likes it, he thinks. 

In the shower, Eddie cleans his body and doesn’t think about anything important. He thinks about a joke Richie told him last night, about a meeting he has with the head of a Methodist church in town, about what to get his mother for her birthday. He touches the marks from last night again, but it’s a new day the way it wasn’t, exactly, this morning and they just sting now. 

After he’s finished in the bathroom, he and Richie switch and while Richie cleans himself, Eddie dresses in black slacks and a black short sleeve button up shirt. He’s tucking his shirt into his pants when Richie appears in the doorway to his bedroom, already wearing his cargo shorts from last night and a T-shirt, but not the one he wore while they had sex this morning. 

“Where did you get that?” Eddie asks, pointing to the shirt. It’s blue with text over the chest that says, ‘My boobs are real.’

Richie shrugs and looks away. “I have a couple stashed around,” he says. It makes Eddie’s face heat up to think about Richie keeping clothes in the rectory, his house. They blush at each other, but don’t say anything. 

In the kitchen, Eddie reheats his coffee in the microwave, but Richie finishes his cold. They sit at the table, sipping and talking. They lace the fingers of their free hands together, drinking coffee one handed. When Eddie drains his mug, he realizes it’s almost time to go to his meeting. He stands from the table and walks over to the counter, reaching for his collar. He took off last night before Richie got there and tossed it near a bag of week old bread. He touches it with the hands that held Richie close, that pushed into Richie and felt inside of him. 

“Can you—” Eddie starts but has to clear his throat. He tries again, “Can you help me? With this?” He holds out the collar and meets Richie’s eyes from across the room. 

Richie stands slowly, both hands on the table for support until he’s steady on his feet. He ambles over and takes the collar from Eddie’s outstretched hand, like touching it hurts him. Like it’s something that will bite him if he isn’t careful. 

“Turn around,” he instructs and Eddie does. Richie slides the collar through his shirt, closing the two ends so it sits under Eddie’s shirt collar in a perfect circle. Richie’s fingers linger on his neck, brushing over the hickey he left there, safe from prying eyes unless they’re looking directly down his shirt from above. 

When Eddie turns back around, the light from the midday sun shines through the window above the kitchen sink and it looks, just a moment, like Richie has a corona of sunlight behind his head, like a parody of a great saint. Eddie blinks and it’s gone. Richie’s hands still touch the collar, covering it, like if he can’t see it it doesn’t exist. 

“Come by tonight?” Eddie says, covering Richie’s hands with his own. “So we can go to Walmart?” 

Eddie’s going to take off his collar and put on one of Richie’s shirts and drive them at least an hour away so he can pretend for a second that they aren’t who they are. That he isn’t a priest, that Richie isn’t the church’s gardener. They’re just too guys going shopping. Eddie can feel the guilt welling in the space between his ribs already. He clutches at Richie’s hands. 

“Yeah,” Richie clears his throat. “Yeah, Eds, I’ll be here.” 

Richie kisses him goodbye, biting at his lips and clinging to his shoulders. Eddie fists the back of his shirt and wishes he could fall back into bed where things were worse but quieter. In the sunlight it’s hard, but out of those sheets it’s even harder. 

From his kitchen window, he watches Richie climb into his car and drive off. His lips burn and his chest aches. He feels his throat grow tight. 

He doesn’t think about it.


End file.
